Charles Ellicott Commentary Philippians 3:21

"who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, [that it may be] conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself." — Philippians 3:21 (ASV)

Who shall change . . .—This passage needs a more accurate translation. It should be, who shall change the fashion of the body of our humiliation, to be conformed to the body of His glory.

1. On the difference between “fashion” and “form,” see Philippians 2:7-8. The contrast here signifies that humiliation is but the outward fashion or covering of the body; the likeness to Christ is, and will be seen to be, its essential and characteristic nature. This “humiliation” marks our condition in this life, as fallen from our true humanity under the bondage of sin and death. The body is not really “vile,” though it is fallen and degraded.
2. “His glory” is His glorified human nature, as it was after the Resurrection, as it is now in His ascended majesty, as it will be seen at His second coming. We gather what it is and will be from the sublime descriptions of Revelation 1:13-16, Revelation 19:12–16, and Revelation 20:11. What is here briefly described as change to conformity with that glory is worked out in 1 Corinthians 15:42–44 and 1 Corinthians 15:53–54, into the contrast between corruption and incorruption, dishonour and glory, weakness and power, the natural (animal) body and the spiritual body. In 2 Corinthians 3:18 and 2 Corinthians 4:16, we read of the beginning of glorification in the spirit here; in 2 Corinthians 4:17–18 and 2 Corinthians 5:1–4, of the completion of the exceeding weight of glory in the hereafter, as glorifying also our house which is in heaven.

St. John describes that glorification with brief emphatic solemnity, We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is, and draws out explicitly the moral which St. Paul here implies, Every man that hath this hope purifieth himself, even as He is pure.

According to the working . . .—Properly, in virtue of the effectual working of His power to subject all things to Himself. (Ephesians 3:7, and Notes there). Here, as there, St. Paul speaks of His power as not dormant or existing in mere capacity, but as energetic in working, unhasting and unresting.

Here briefly, as more fully in the celebrated passage of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15:24–28), he describes it as subduing all things unto Himself, until the consummation of this universal conquest in the Last Judgment and the delivery of the kingdom to God, even the Father . . . that God may be all in all. Of that power the primary exhibition, in which He is pleased to delight, is in salvation, gradually preparing His own for heaven; the secondary exhibition, undertaken under a moral necessity, is in retributive judgment. It is of the former only that St. Paul speaks here, as it will be made perfect in the resurrection to eternal life.